Honorable Forum:

Observations about causal and inhibiting factors in scientific accomplishments:

"The more you generalize about a population, the less you know about any individual in that population." --Henry Geiger

There are a lot of variables that figure into such conclusions, and picking the most relevant ones may not match the "most obvious" ones.

What is needed is enough data to demonstrate causation, but even then there's the specter of bias in selecting which phenomena to observe, weighting, scoring etc.

Ironic, eh?

WT

PS: I've recently alluded to a single example of a single (anecdote is the singular of data) scientist couple who seem to have reconciled their family and professional lives pretty well, raising two (so far) healthy and bright children in the process. This leads me to believe that there might be an infinity (for practical purposes) of approaches, none of them particularly easy, but some quite rewarding, especially if one's attitude is more about making the best of what one has to work with and calling it good than having expectations of perfection, both from oneself and the context one finds oneself in. Life is a crapshoot, and some of us get lucky and some of us just get with it, and all of us "suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune" to greater and lesser degrees.


----- Original Message ----- From: "Martin Meiss" <mme...@gmail.com>
To: <ECOLOG-L@LISTSERV.UMD.EDU>
Sent: Wednesday, April 11, 2012 3:21 PM
Subject: Re: [ECOLOG-L] Families in Science - Balancing your personal and professional life


One problem not addressed here so far is that science is very competitive
for jobs, publication, and grants.  Let us imagine two young scientists
with similar intelligence and education beginning their careers:

Case 1. This person has a spouse who assumes most of the responsibility in
the domestic sphere (house-keeping, child-rearing, bill-paying, shopping,
lawn-mowing, etc.), provides support to the scientist however needed, and
has no career choices to conflict with the scientists'.

Case 2.  This person has a spouse whose career is also demanding, can only
do some of the domestic and child-rearing chores, and who may insist on
taking a job in another state, requiring the scientist to move or make some
other major adjustment.

Obviously, the scientist in Case 1 is at a competitive advantage.  Of
course, there's nothing new about stating this; feminists have been
pointing it out for many years.  This may be what the person Rachel Guy
quoted meant.  It's not that the person with the more "balanced" life does
inferior science; indeed, this persons' broader experience and different
perspectives may lead to science that is more creative, leading to greater
insights into nature and greater increase in knowledge.

Fine, but that doesn't mean Case 1's career will go better.  Much
scientific advancement and career advancement is achieved by plodding along
doggedly. This alone can result in more publications, grants, etc.  The
scientist of Case 2 simply has more time for grinding out scientific
product.

I don't want to be to cynical, but it seems to me that, all else being
equal, the person who focuses his/her life only on science is going to have
a more "successful" career, perhaps at the expense of being a narrow and
boring person.  These are the choices that anyone in a competitive career
must face, and I don't see how institutional and societal accommodations
will ever completely eliminate this disparity.

Martin M. Meiss


2012/4/11 Elizabeth <elizabethm...@gmail.com>

I am struggling with this.  I finished my MS in Wildlife Biology when my
baby was 7 months. She's going on 15 months now and I haven't been able to find any work in my field. I'm limited to a job that has no travel and is in town where my husband has his job and we have our house. This makes for
very slim pickings.

Elizabeth Ray

On Wed, Apr 11, 2012 at 12:08 PM, Andres Lopez-Sepulcre <
lopezsepul...@gmail.com> wrote:

> In my experience, it all depends on the country and how easy funding
> agencies, research institutions and governments make it. I have
experience
> in several countries: Spain, USA, France and Finland. They each have
their
> good and bad points on that respect. Fore example, while the USA and
Canada
> tend to be pretty good at opening jobs for couples, which helps
enormously
> the two-body problem, I find that some European countries offer better
> conditions to be a parent. For example, in Finland and Sweden the
> government offers paid maternity and/or paternity leaves of at least 10
> months. Since this is a 'stipend' independent of the scientific
fellowship
> or contract, it essentially means that if they had 3-years of funding,
they
> now will have that + 10 months (i.e. the grant or contract 'slides'
> forward). Moreover, there are good free or cheap daycare services and
even
> sometimes, daycare or family-housing in field stations. The conditions
are
> so good that I have never seen such a high rate of graduate students
> pregnant or with children as in those countries... and they are
> consequentially doing better than average at keeping women in science. > Of > course, many countries (like Spain, my home-country) fail in all > aspects.
>
> Andres Lopez-Sepulcre
> Laboratoire d'Ecologie, UMR 7625
> Ecole Normale Superieure, Paris
> alo...@biologie.ens.fr
>
> http://web.me.com/asepulcre
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Apr 11, 2012, at 5:54 PM, Rachel Guy wrote:
>
>  I've been following the debate Simone Whitecloud inspired concerning
>> babies in the field. This brought to mind something I was told when I
was
>> pursuing my B.S.  in Wildlife Ecology:
>>
>> "You can be a scientist, a spouse or a parent. Two of these things >> you >> can be simultaneously great at doing, while the third will suffer." >> I'm >> not sure I entirely agree with this statement, but I have seen >> personal
>> relationships tried by professional obligations and professional
>> obligations tried by personal obligations. Particularly in a field >> that
>> often demands long absences and irregular hours, I can see how this
would
>> particularly be true. Though, I have also seen faculty and research
>> scientists with families that seem pretty stable and happy. Is there >> any
>> substance to this paradigm, and if so, are there realistic ways in
which we
>> can change them? I'd love to hear the communities' thoughts on this as
it
>> is something that I have often reflected on as I've progressed through
my
>> career. Can we have it all? What are the key differences between the
ones
>> that are seemingly able to do it and the one's where the challenges
become
>> too great?
>>
>> Rachel Guy
>> Project Coordinator, Research Assistant
>>
>>
>>
>>



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